


where flowers of antimony lie

by fen-asha (vibevalkyrie)



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Flower Shop & Tattoo Parlor, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate universe - Mafia, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, F/M, Inspired by Hades and Persephone (Ancient Greek Religion & Lore), Mafia!Evanuris, Mafia!Solas, Mafioso!Fen'Harel, Mafioso!Solas, Mobster!Fen'Harel, Mobster!Solas, Modern Thedas, Professor!Solas, mafia!au
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-26
Updated: 2020-04-28
Packaged: 2021-03-02 09:22:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,348
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23848903
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vibevalkyrie/pseuds/fen-asha
Summary: In Arlathan, nothing goes without a price, and few can afford to go without the protection of the Evanuris. Having lost her family to them when she was a child, Daciana Lavellan would rather take her chances with the wolves at her door - and soon enough, the Dread Wolf inside her door.|| Thanks to @thecadmiuminkwell from tumblr for use of her original character Veda Lavellan, the best sister that Daciana could ask for. ||
Relationships: Female Lavellan/Cullen Rutherford, Female Lavellan/Solas, Fen'Harel | Solas/Original Character(s), Fen'Harel/Female Lavellan, Fen'Harel/Lavellan, Iron Bull & Dorian Pavus, Iron Bull/Dorian Pavus, Lavellan & Solas
Comments: 1
Kudos: 21





	1. follow the rainclouds

Veda owed her. Big time.

Daciana took a hard hit from the essential oil vaporizer twitching between her fingers, bergamot and blood lotus and cedar coiling around her tongue. Her sister knew how much she hated to wait. Exhaling through her nose, Daciana shut her eyes and tipped her head back. The scent of rain-washed coastal woods wound about her, soothing—for a moment. A cold city wind cut through the leather of her jacket, cigarettes and smog and car exhaust and loneliness. Winter was just around the corner, and gods did Arlathan like to let you know it. The streets smelled of cold concrete, and the shadows of the Black City loomed ever darker as the nights prowled on.

_ Next time, she can bring her own damn laptop,  _ Daci thought, shrugging her sister’s bookbag on her shoulder and leaning against her bike with a scowl.  _ This weather is ass. She owes me a coffee _ .

To make matters worse, every human on the campus had been eyeing her as they shuffled past. The girls frowned at her, glancing over her paint-splattered jeans and split ends before deciding she wasn’t worth it; the boys traced the tattoos on her arms hungrily up to her shoulders, no doubt wondering where else she’d let the needle kiss her skin. Of all the places her little sister had decided to go, it was this cabbage of a law school.

Daciana muttered a choice curse in Dalish beneath her breath. Fenedhis, it was cold, and it wasn’t even the Equinox yet.

Another inhale on the vaporizer. The Equinox was another thing entirely. She had months of pre-ordered florals to arrange for the city’s elite to flaunt at their parties, and less than one to get them done.

_ I don’t have time for this. _

“Daci!”

Daciana let loose the vapor she’d been holding in her mouth and opened her eyes, watching the silver streams curl into the sky.

“About damn time,” she called back, and straightened up with a groan.

Veda was waving at her from across the courtyard, arms full of books and cotton-blonde hair in her face. Another elf stood with her, hands politely clasped behind his back. He was dressed more casually than most of the humans she had seen, a simple woolen sweater over a collared shirt rather than a full suit, but he stood like a man with something to lose, even if it were only his pride.

Daciana kept the frown from her face. An elf on this campus certainly had plenty to lose, especially one without any visible vallaslin to tie him to one of the Evanuris. Tucking her hands into her pockets, she shrugged away from her bike and made her way over.

“Here,” she said, holding out the bag; then, sharply, clutching it back as Veda slammed into her with a hug. “Mmfh.”

“ _ Ma serannas.  _ Thank you, Daci.” Veda beamed up at her and slipped her shoulders under the strap. Her cheeks were pink and flushed with cold, but it was the half-hearted shift of her weight from one foot to the other that gave away her embarrassment. Veda wore shame like an ill-fit coat. “Sorry I took you away from the shop, but Cullen’s on night shift this week, so…”

“Yeah, yeah. Whatever; shop’s closed anyway and I didn’t have any appointments, so.” Daciana shrugged and took a step back.

Her eyes flicked to the elven male standing nearby, too aware of his attention. His head was shaved clean, jaw strong and angled, but his eyes were the demure grey-blue of the winter sky. Elves did not show their age half so soon as humans, but her best guess put him well beyond Veda’s years. It was a law school, however; there were senior students, verified law partners, employees from scouting firms.

Veda cast an uncertain glance her way and inched forward. Daciana recognized the motion - she’d been stepping between her and the fights she picked since they were children.

“Daci,” she said cautiously, “this is Professor Arunave.”

“Solas,” the male corrected, inclining his head with the faintest of smiles, “if there are to be introductions. You must be Veda’s sister.”

“Daciana. Yeah.”

“She speaks well of you,” Solas continued, “It is a pleasure to put a face to the name.”

“I wouldn’t get used to it,” Daciana said, only half joking as she offered a vague smile. “My college days are done, and I have a shop to run.”

Two, actually, though they served such disparate clientele that they rarely intertwined even when housed together in her itty-bitty-city-shop space. Spring and summer were the seasons for weddings and tattoos—bad decision seasons, really—and were the only times that her flower shop and tattoo parlor might chance to twine. Come winter, though the market for marking up your skin ran steady, the floral front saw less and less traffic.

Except the Equinox preparations. Shit.

“Speaking of running, I gotta-”

Veda cut her off. “Coffee!” The younger elf’s hand wrapped around her wrist. “I…I mean, stay. For coffee. Please?” Her lower lip pushed out in a pout; her eyes darted to Daciana’s waiting bike. Panic. Her fingers wrapped tighter in the silence.

“I…”

“Professor Arunave, would you like to join us for coffee?” Veda turned to Solas and smiled, fingers still curled in the leather of Daciana’s sleeve. “My treat!”

Solas glanced at Daciana, tapped his finger against his wrist, and, at her sigh, inclined his head towards Veda.

“If you insist, Miss Lavellan. It appears as if I have the time for a small diversion before my next lecture,” he said, giving a perfunctory glance at his watch.

“Daci?”

“Mmm…this doesn’t count for the coffee you owe me for this errand,” Daciana muttered. She twisted her wrist away from Veda’s loosening grasp, replacing the contact with a gentle nudge against her sibling’s shoulder. “Where are we going?”

Arlathan was a large, sprawling city of skyscrapers, gridlocked streets and alleys that started and ended without cause. Small shops thrived in the shadows like weeds in the cracks of sidewalk, and coffee was easier to find than cigarettes.

Veda linked her arm with Daciana, shifting her books to one side, and nodded out of the courtyard’s southwest corner.

“There’s a campus coffee shop just over there. They have the  _ best _ blueberry muffins, I swear.”

Blueberry muffins were hardly Daciana’s concern as the three of them started down the path. One elf on a primarily human campus was a mystery. Two was a mistake. Three was a joke. Out of habit, Daciana reached over to Veda and brushed her hair out of her face, casually covering an exposed ear as she did so. The shems could throw shade her way all they wanted, but it was Veda who had to live and breathe and work with them, not her.

Inside the coffee shop, however, it was warm and filled with the rich, dark perfume of espresso and steamed milk. Most students were clustered on threadbare couches with mismatching cushions, or absorbed in their textbooks with headphones in and half-empty drinks at their side. A handful waiting in line were still wearing the suits Daciana had grown used to seeing on the law campus, but most had shed their white collar shells for the comfort of sweatpants and cardigans. With those shells had gone their prejudices, at least, for appearances; humans and elves and even the occasional Qunari lounged together in the comfortable comatose of caffeine and homework. There was even a handful of dwarves in an animated argument with a Qunari student in the corner over the chess set and why this piece meant so much more because of the stone it was carved from, and the ethical implications of playing with a stone set. The Qunari was not impressed.

Ushering the two of them to an unoccupied table wedged between the windows and a bookshelf, Veda left Solas and Daciana alone and flounced off with their orders to the line. Daciana leaned into the window and crossed her legs one over the other. Beyond the window, the city was turning grey with a heavy afternoon mist.

“You mentioned you ran a shop,” Solas said after a moment of silence had passed, folding his hands on the table. “What wares do you sell?”

“Aesthetics, mostly,” Daciana said, then snorted and repressed a laugh. “Sorry. Small talk isn’t my thing.” It was hard to remember how to be polite, sometimes. “I’m a tattoo artist, and a florist.”

Flexing her hand in a miniscule shrug, Daciana shifted to face Solas and found him with a vague smile.

“You inscribe beauty on skin to make it last longer than a moment,” he said, “and you arrange nature to be more pleasing to the eye than it already is. I would say that selling “aesthetics” is more than apt.”

“You might be the first person I’ve told to understand that.” This time, the laugh, though small, was genuine. “Do you teach art history or something?”

“Or Something.” The corner of his mouth turned up. “The Ethics of Magic and Law, to be precise.”

“Magic. Huh.”  _ Didn’t realize it had ethics _ , she almost said, but of course she did. How to get consent for partners in a group spell, when modifying memories was or was not an appropriate course of action (hint: never), and of course… “Blood magic?” She couldn’t help the words, her veins prickling just at the thought.

Solas leaned forward and rested his chin against his folded hands. “That is one aspect of study, yes; more popular in pop culture and fiction than in practice. I challenge my students to think of the implications of all magic. Consider the shot of charisma that you can order added to your coffee—is the student who orders this cheating on their upcoming presentation? Does it give them an unfair advantage, or, since it can be obtained by anyone who asks, is it “fair,” so to speak? For that matter, are elves and humans or even Qunari inherently more advantaged in life because they can dream and dwarves cannot?”

“How would dreaming grant an unfair advantage in life?” Daciana asked with a frown.

_ In my experience, all it grants me is less sleep than I asked for. _

“How do you come up with designs for your tattoos?” Solas gestured with one hand, the faintest flicker of Fade at his fingertips. “Perhaps they are not granted to you in a vision or dream of any remark, but certainly they came from a place of inspiration within you, did they not? The same for the author, the painter, the sculptor. Does our inherent connection to the Fade give elves an advantage in such creative fields, or does it simply mean we have more of an inclination towards them, the same as you are more inclined towards caring for plants than I?”

‘Tada!”

Daciana blinked and sat sharply back as Veda set down a cup carrier in the center of the table.

“One dark chocolate cherry mocha, for Daci-” Daciana grabbed the drink by reflex and murmured a thank you, “a decaf americano with two sugars and milk for you, Professor Arunave, and an iced caramel macchiato for me.”

“My thanks, Miss Lavellan,” the other elf said as he accepted the coffee. Then, with a glance at Daciana. “Are you a mage as well, like your sister?”

“No,” Daciana and Veda said at the same time. Veda rushed to hurry the conversation on to something else, while Daciana sank back into the corner of the booth and stared out towards the city skyline as rain began to patter against the glass.

When polite conversations and coffee ran low, Solas excused himself to his office for open office hours before his next lecture, and Veda glanced sheepishly at Daciana.

“Thanks again,” she said, but Daciana merely shrugged.

_ “Ma nuvenin, da’elgar _ .” Daciana wrapped her arm around Veda and gave her a brief hug. “You’d lose your head if it wasn’t attached to your shoulders, so it’s fine. But,” She jerked her head towards the door and stood, gently ruffling Veda’s hair. “I really do have to go.”

“Maybe dinner tonight?” Veda asked, not moving from the edge of the booth as she smiled hopefully. “My place? Pleeeeease? I’ll make mom’s Dalish Deep Dish Comfort! And we can watch a movie!”

Daciana repressed a groan, but her stomach rumbled just at the name of the dish. Still, it wouldn’t be wise to give in to Veda’s every whim. If Daciana started doing that, they’d be shopping for Mabari puppies. But her sister’s grin fell away to something far less in-character, tension knotted between her brows, and Daciana’s resolve flickered. 

An exhausted sigh fell from Veda’s lips. “It’s just… it’s been a long week," she said weakly. "I’d like to talk to you some more. Catch up, and, and all that. I know I sort of sprung this on you,” she gestured to the empty seat that Professor had vacated, the crowd of students still milling about in the shop like overly-caffeinated, sleep-deprived, bumblebees, “but I just — we never talk anymore. I miss you.” 

There was an exhaustion hanging over her sister’s shoulders, something Veda wasn't saying, but Daciana didn't push.One dinner wouldn’t kill her, she supposed.

“Ugh…Ve _ da…"  _ Daciana threw her head back dramatically before peeking open one eye. "...Fine." Veda’s face lit up in a smile that Daciana couldn’t help but return. “That’ s a second coffee, though.”

“I’ll make you an entire pot!” Her sister promised, squishing her close in another hug. “What time?”

“Better make it a late one.” Daciana frowned over Veda’s shoulder at the rain sliding down the coffee shop’s door. “I’ve got a few arrangements to finish up tonight before heading over, and the drive home is going to be a pain.”

“Here.” Veda lay her hands against Daciana’s shoulders, then smoothed them down her sleeves, spreading a cool, gel-like barrier over the leather. It inflated as she pulled her hands back, then sighed into place when she clapped her hands together. “That should keep you dry until you get home. Be safe? Please?”

“‘Course,” Daciana murmured, rolling her shoulders as Veda’s magic continued to settle against her skin. “You too, V. I’ll see you later tonight.”

“Tonight! Promise?”

“I promise, alright?” With a faint smile, Daciana walked out into the rain, droplets glancing off the barrier like glass. “I’d never miss a dinner date with my little sister.”


	2. chance to twine

Halfway home the gentle rain (which, let’s face it, was hardly gentle at all when bent over the bars of a Kawasaki Ninja going 50 down narrow city streets) became a storm. By the time Daciana managed to unlock the back door to her shop, her reflection in the window reminded her of a wilted rose, red hair dripping wet not even five minutes out of her helmet. The leather of her riding gear was clammy and cold against her skin. 

“I’m home,” she called to the plants in their pots and the empty chair in the back. Then, shrugging out of her jacket, she clicked her tongue and gave a trilling _rrrr_ ~ sound.

One quiet meow answered her, a small bump against her knee, followed by a weight on the back of her shoulders as she bent down to pet the calico winding between her feet.

“Hey Cass. And you, Cole,” she murmured, turning her head to kiss the nose of the grey kitten perched on her shoulder. 

Vivienne, a Persian with impeccably blue eyes that glowed like lyrium, sat a safe distance away, watching the water drip to the floor in distaste.

“Oh come on, _Madame de Fur_ ,” Daciana said, rolling her eyes as she shut the door behind her. “Afraid to get your whiskers wet?”

As if in answer, the sleek feline sneezed, sniffed, and turned away. Daciana stuck her tongue out. 

“Be that way then.”

‘Home’ was technically a small artist's loft above a flower shop crammed between brick buildings in downtown Arlathan. Daciana hung her coat by the door and twisted the lock. Eleusis hung in the liminal space between Arlathan’s Pearl District—artisan shops and trendy high rise apartments—and what most in the city referred to as The Black City. Clubs, bars, broken warehouses, streets you wouldn't want to walk alone at night. And every inch ruled by the Evanuris, Arlathan’s resident crime syndicate. Half the city saw them as celebrities; the other half was scared to breathe without paying them to be kept “safe.” For her part, Daciana saw their little “family” as a blight on the city, at best. But, like a tick burrowed beneath the skin, it wouldn't take anything less than a fire to burn them out of Arlathan's blood.

With Cassandra winding between her feet and Cole still perched on her shoulder, Daciana left her shoes at the door and flicked on the lights. Low-hanging sunlamps effused a warm glow in the greenhouse store front, warm and humid and homey. The back parlor burned with a brighter, fluorescent light, as did a single strip of studio lights above the flower shop’s main counter. Better for clarity of color and detail, even if it did make her eyes hurt after a long day. She’d bought and paid for this shop in blood and sweat; she could deal with its little bullshits.

“C’mon beasties,” Daci sighed. “Let’s feed you, yeah? You'll bitch at me later if I go to dinner without feeding you first, huh.”

A chorus of meows followed her up the stairs.

While the cats ate, Daciana combed the tangles from her hair and braided it tightly away from her face. If not a shower, Veda at least deserved more than the look Daciana usually sported — somewhere between the innocence of _I just finished playing with dirt_ and _kinkshaming is my kink don't @ me_.

She was changing her shirt when the glass shattered. Cassandra hissed and made for the stairwell. Daciana yanked her tank top down and grabbed the calico by her scruff, throwing her back on the bed.

“Stay. All of you.”

_For fuck’s sake._

“I’ll give you thirty seconds to get out of my shop,” she called down the stairs, grabbing her daggers from where she'd left them by the door. “ _Ten_ if you're with the Evanuris.”

 _Three if you work for Elgar'nan_. 

The bitter mixture of hate and fear mulled in her mouth. Holding her daggers flush against her forearms, Daciana crept barefoot down the stairs. Veda had her magic. Daciana had her stealth, her blades, and—she shot from the shadows like lightning, a bolt of the same barely missing where she'd been standing—her impeccable timing. 

“Ah, c’mon, Daci,” jeered a dark-haired male with Elgar'nan's vines crawling up his arms. Glittering lightning snaked across his fingertips, and he smiled hungrily. “Boss says hi~.”

“ _Boss_ can suck a dick.”

With one eye on the intruders, Daciana edged around the counter and took stock of the damages she faced. Glass littered the floor, the front door ajar from one hinge (gods that was going to be expensive to replace), and several pots had been overturned. Nothing irreparable. Yet.

“Get out of my shop, Vangelis,” she said evenly. Her dagger flickered in the light. “Take your boys, and go before someone bleeds. I know you're under orders not to kill me—you’re wasting my time and yours. Get lost.”

“Things’d go a bit better if you just came with us, y’know.” Vangelis shrugged amiably and smiled at the other elves with him; five, in total. All mages, and all marked with Elgar'nan's vallaslin in some fashion. “Boss is just lookin’ out for ya. Dangerous city, Arlathan. Getting more dangerous by the minute, ‘specially for a lovely lady like you.” With every word, Daciana felt the magical pressure of the Fade pulsing inward on the already small interior of the shop. The base of her skull began to ache. “He's waiting for you. Down in The Black City.”

“He can wait in hell.”

 _Eleusis_ exploded.


End file.
